Elizabeth pushed herself off the floor, her old toes scrabbling tiredly on the linoleum for purchase, to follow him out to the back porch where he was drifting, telephone in hand.
Good morning, dear. Get me Mr. Smithers, please. Two-Tie looked out over the trash barrels down in the courtyard, the pile of rotting windows and ragged patches of tar paper, broken chairs and stacks of empties from the Ritzy Lunch and the blowing laundry on the next porch, and he felt calm and in tune, this end of his life being tied securely to the other by a porch much like his mother's back on Patterson Park Avenue in East Baltimore, although hers had had a fine vegetable garden down at the foot of it, every inch of the backyard dunged from ayrabbers' horses and planted, with the leaves from the last row of radishes poking through the alley fence.
Vernon. Look. These things happen. Just because I am interested in a horse in a particular race don't mean nobody else is trying to win. In the fourth race last night as you know I am very interested in the one horse. Correct, Buckle My Shoe. Before this race goes off I hear nutting about some possible unknown factors that could figure. Am I right or do I forget something? All right then, nutting.
As I say, I am aware such things happen. Some jeff ships in from god knows where. We don't know him. He's not from here. He ain't even looked around to see how things work here. He's got his mind on his own business and he tries to win first time out and gets lucky. Somehow I don't hear nutting about the mug, who appeared inconsequential. These things happen, Vernon. We make allowances for that.
What I fail to understand in this particular case is two horses beating the crap out of mine, and I hear nutting in front, not word one, zooker. Alls I can say, it's a good thing Buckle My Shoe goes off at such a sorry price so I'm not in heavy. But as you know, Vernon, I like to keep myself covered, and I know nutting about the four horse, on paper he looks like shit. Well, it's Zeno's horse, alev ha-sholom, poor slob, so I have to know he could be gambling. But this other guy with the two horse what got claimed, I never even hear of him before and nobody gives me a call, nutting.
Suitcase mumbled something about the third place purse he had in fact taken home, and Two-Tie winced.
We are talking about a very small piece of change here, Vernon, and besides, as you know, he delicately cleared his throat, I am not the owner of this horse. These are complex operations. A little money may be going more ways than a dago waiter in such a operation and this purse don't even qualify as money in my book. It's basically nutting.
Suitcase goes bop de bop, this and that, he's sorry, he'd never thought, it was late, the girl forgot to call, and finally, okay, I owe you one.
Thank you. It's interesting you should put it that way-it so happens I want you to do something for me, Vernon, not right away, let's say in the spring, maybe twelve, thirteen weeks into the meeting-and not because you owe me-I overlook such considerations from friends, even if you do owe me-but because in my opinion the deal is good for the People, and for Horse Racing.
Two-Tie paused to let this piety sink in. Men like Ogden and Rohring did things for Horse Racing. Now Two-Tie and Suitcase could do something for Horse Racing, and it wouldn't cost them a dime of their own money, and they could make a bundle on the same deal.
Take something out of that Tri-State Glass and Marble Industries kitty, I know you got some left, Two-Tie suggested. Or I could put the squeeze on the bargeman for you. He owes me deep.
So? Suitcase said.
So I want you should write me a race, well, not me personally, fellow from Nebraska, kid I used to know back when-actually I used to know his mother. Beautiful, skinny broad, but nervous. Yellow hair in a nice soft puff, like a Easter chick. She was very good to me. Alas, I fear I did not return the favor like I should have. Died young. Cancer.
Anyway the kid ends up out at Aksarben with a stakes horse that once was big, the biggest, a legend. He's tryna make a little comeback Nebraska, you say?
Correct.
Not Lord of Misrule?
Lord of Misrule, Two-Tie admitted, in not quite the sanguine tone he was attempting.
Lord of Misrule-Jesus Christ, what about that fall last year? Ain't he dead?
I hear he's doing good. He ain't back racing yet. They're sharpening him up-slow Slow-I guess. I don't know, Two-Tie. Jesus, he must be eating bute for breakfast lunch and dinner-no wonder he's in Nebraska. You sure that horse can walk?
Maybe he can't walk, Vernon, but he can run. That's what the kid tells me. And he can still beat the class at the Mound. Anyway the horse should be a draw in a nice little special allowance race some Sunday-call it the Glass Block or the Crystal Classic or something. Everybody wants to know the ending with a horse like that. It's a whatever-happened-to-so-and-so kind of story. Tie it up beautiful for the fans. Even if it's his last race they can always say I saw it. It's history.
I wouldn't put no horse of mine out on the racetrack next to that wreck.
Say, five grand added. Nice little pots for the finishers down to six, to make sure the race fills up.
I don't know. I have to think about that.
You think about it. Plenty of time. Meanwhile, on another, unrelated matter, Vernon. My elderly cousin in the city tells me a distant relation of mine, a young lady, may be headed this way. She is the daughter of a person once dear to me, my niece Dorothy, a brilliant, beautiful girl, a college graduate, who died in a trainwreck on the Pennsylvania Railroad in, lemme see, 1955. The niece left two small children and this is one. She is no racetracker, this young woman, but she got herself hooked up with a racetracker. I like to know if she gets here-Koderer-Margaret Koderer is the name. Should be around 25 years old. I wish to keep an eye on her for the mother's sake.
Suitcase said just a minute, he might have wrote down a groom's license for a girl with that name last night. Yeah, as a matter of fact she come in with the guy who run the two horse.
Is that so? Ain't that a coincidence. What's his name?
Hansel.
Irish, Two-Tie sniffed. I would like to know everything about that fellow, where he come from, what he's got for horses, whether he's a gentleman, educated, what. Where he banks, so to speak. And Vernon, you didn't hang up my great-niece for stalls, did you?
There was a one-day temporary shortage, Suitcase said. There won't be no problem today.
I should hope not.
I'll look into it.
And by the way, Vernon. This young lady doesn't know me from a hole in the ground. The families wasn't close in recent years. Don't mention my name. It's not that kind of thing.
I'll get back to you, Suitcase says.
Two-Tie picked up Elizabeth's leash, which nowadays he mainly carried, waiting for her to catch up with him at the curbs and street corners. And she followed along after him, toenails tapping as if she was blind as well as old, out the door and down the stairs.
They had a route through the streets of Carbonport that took nearly an hour, although the town was made up of only five streets, two avenues that turned into county roads and ran up in the hills, and one riverfront park, really a rundown parking lot, by the ferry landing. He had long since observed that Elizabeth had superfluous IQ for her line of work, and inside all that free space in her brain she was completing a philosophy of the world wove together out of all the smells she had ever smelled. Maybe her memory was not the longest. Every day she had to go over every line of it again from top to bottom, just like the day before. She was history-minded: she wanted a piece of every dog who had come before her to every landmark, the whole roll call, every tuft of grass at the foot of the loading platform by the old natrium plant, every pile of boards or lost truck part in the fringe of weeds along the shore at the four-car ferry, every corner stump or clump of pee-bleached iris on the shaggy line where front yards ended in pavement. The one-time ice house. The Wheeling amp; Lake Erie water tower. Every boundary stone still standing, however crookedly, in front of the town cemetery. Where putting her own bit into this olfactory model of the world was concerned, Elizabeth was not demure but lifted her leg like any male dog, a little decrepitly now that she was old. Come outa there, Elizabeth. He didn't want her pissing on the gravestones.